


gold coast, deep water

by lochTenderness (theseourbodies)



Series: gold coast [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Short & Sweet, Summer in the City, and that's all, because Bulls player Kagami is the hill I guess, gold coast as in Chicago
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25882867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseourbodies/pseuds/lochTenderness
Summary: Kagami Taiga, burger master, charmer of mothers.
Relationships: Kagami Taiga/Kuroko Tetsuya
Series: gold coast [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2017337
Comments: 9
Kudos: 71





	gold coast, deep water

From outside the kitchen, Taiga hears Kuroko say, “Yes. Yes. It’s very nice. No one has talked to me at random in five days, I am beginning to think that I am looking more local.”   
  
Taiga bites down on his smile and carefully checks the underside of the burger on the griddle. He’s known for a comfortable five years that that really is Kuroko’s natural hair color, but every local they meet seems to just accept it as a style choice. Between the pale hair and the ghost eyes, Kuroko really does fit in better in Chicago than he had in LA. But backlit by the strange dark water of the lake, Kuroko’s also particularly intense. Taiga’s still not really used to it; he doesn’t blame strangers for being more cautious here than in LA.   
  
“Hm. Yes. Burgers—yes, of course. No, I always take full advantage.”   
  
Taiga rolls his eyes, knowing what Kuroko’s talking about even only with his vague half of the conversation to go on. He leans back to look through the pass through from the kitchen to the rest of the apartment to find Kuroko leaning against the wall beside their balcony door, already smirking back at him. Taiga makes an unimpressed face and Kuroko goes back to looking out of the sliding glass doors, biting his lip against his own grin. Taiga has to look away, flipping the burger faux-casually, reminding himself that it’s stupid to feel embarrassed about looking at his own damn partner in the saturated sunset-light.  
  
Kuroko knocks softly on the kitchen wall, careful to catch Taiga’s attention-- always careful in the kitchen, at least. “Yes—would you like to say hello, Mom?” Taiga, half of another patty already taking shape in his hands, leans down when Kuroko motions for him, let’s Kuroko press his phone to Taiga’s ear.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“ _Taiga-kun, hello! Tetsuya has told me you are continuing to indulge his obsession with beef patties._ ”   
  
Kuroko, up on his tip-toes to press his own ear close to the mic, huffs.   
  
“Yeah, gotta keep him happy somehow,” Taiga tells Kasumi, winking at Kuroko when he grumbles. “If I didn’t sling burgers I think he’d drop me flat—Oof!”   
  
Kuroko Kasumi’s voice is only a little higher than her son’s, but her laugh is the same breathy gasp. “ _Taiga-kun, don’t let my son bully you around. Do your best!_ ”  
  
Kuroko bumps the call to speakerphone and stands flat footed again with the phone held aloft between them, clutched in his hand. Taiga, chuckling, throws the new patty on the griddle.   
  
“I,” Kuroko tells the phone archly, “have never bullied Kagami-kun in my life, Mother.”   
  
Kasumi chortles gleefully over the line. “ _Perhaps. Though if you have not, then I believe that Taiga-kun is just something of a-- a_ push over _, sweetheart_ ,” she says, not unkindly.   
  
“Jeez,” mutters Taiga at the beef mindlessly starting to sizzle. “Good thing I’ve got all this hamburger to eat my feelings with, huh.”   
  
Kuroko chuffs a laugh. Phone still held up so Taiga can hear them both, he slips his arm around Taiga’s waist and leans casually against his back—he’s a line of comforting pressure more than warmth, moving easily with Taiga’s little shifts to check and flip the patty, and then start shaping another one. Kuroko and Kasami ignore him, but it’s only because they’re talking rapidly back and forth now, slipping into the rhythm that Taiga loves to listen to but usually has at least a little trouble following.  
  
It’s late summer on Lake Michigan, so the muggy heat of the day is blown off the city by the wind off the lake; the nights have only just started to bite with icy teeth. In Tokyo, the summer heat would lay like a blanket over everything for another month, even after the sun went down; in LA, where all the asphalt sucks up the heat and never really releases all of it, it would still be boiling. Any wind would smell like smoke from the fires that lit up the coast most summers. Kuroko leans into him, swaying slightly when Taiga rocks back and forth as he cooks. He laughs softly against Taiga’s back and Kasami echoes the same sound back at him, warm.   
  
If he tries, Taiga can remember that first summer spent in LA: Kuroko half choking in a different kind of heat than he had endured for twenty years in Tokyo; Taiga choking on anything that might make Kuroko reconsider uprooting his entire life to move to a country where he barely spoke the language, just to be with Taiga, to share space that was only his, too, because Taiga had told him it was. That first summer had scared the shit out of Taiga, scared him worse than SATs and moving back to the States in the first place. But they had jumped the hurdle just like this—with something cooking in the kitchen, and Kuroko pressed close against him because they could do this now, just reach out and touch one another. 

Even after five years, even though they’re so settled with one another most of their single friends call them gross, the novelty of touch hasn’t gone away. Taiga threads the fingers of his free hand through Kuroko’s and bends down to press a kiss to his palm. He hopes it never does.   
  
“I apologize, Mom, Taiga is being very cute and so I need to go immediately,” he hears Kuroko say— Taiga’s ears burn, but that’s not unusual. It’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s going to be something embarrassing enough to make Taiga flush whenever Kuroko opens his dumb mouth to say something.   
  
Kasumi just laughs again and wishes them well; there’s a flurry of good-byes all around, and Kuroko says carefully, “I love you, please travel safely.” It’s like a ritual; the words are heavy, formal, and Kasumi returns them just as carefully – “ _I love you, I will talk with you soon_ ” – before she ends the call.   
  
“And I also love you,” Kuroko says to Taiga when he sets his phone out of the way. He leans up to press a kiss to the corner of Taiga’s mouth, smiling softy against his cheek. “My beloved hamburger provider.”   
  
“And you ruined it.”   
  
But Taiga, never one to waste an opportunity, kisses Kuroko full on his fool mouth anyway, summer sweet in the heat of the kitchen and the sinking sun. 


End file.
